Google Doodle celebrates 147th birthday of vacuum cleaner inventor Hubert Booth

Google , in order to honour the brain behind the revolutionary inventions of the vacuum cleaner and Ferris wheel (among others), celebrated the 147th birthday of British engineer Hubert Cecil Booth on Wednesday. The animated Google Doodle  on Wednesday shows a man using a modern vacuum cleaner and cleaning a carpet with ‘Google’ written over it.

The doodle also has a strange setup beside the modern machine, depicting a horse pulling a cart with thick pipes coming out of it. This is actually how the first vacuum cleaners looked when Booth invented them. Before this version, cleaning machines just blew or brushed the dirt away instead of sucking it up into the machine.

Booth’s first petrol-powered, horse-drawn vacuum cleaner was too heavy and bulky to be brought into the building but it was built on the same principles of modern ones we see today.

“After seeing a demonstration of the ‘pneumatic carpet renovator’ blowing dirt out of railway cars, Booth tried an experiment. Laying his handkerchief on a restaurant chair, he put his mouth on the table cloth and sucked air through it. Inspired by the results he set to work on his first design—nicknamed ‘Puffing Billy’—which was powered by an engine so big it had to be pulled around by horses and parked outside the house to be cleaned,” a Google release said.

Born on 4 July 1871, Booth is credited with many major inventions including those of the Ferris wheels, suspension bridges and factories. Later he became Chairman and Managing Director of the British Vacuum Cleaner and Engineering Company.

Booth also designed engines for Royal Navy battleships, and had projects in England, France, and Austria. But the Puffing Billy assured that his legacy would be carried long after his death on 14 January, 1955.